The AvePoint Solution

For the Institute, AvePoint provided its expertise in the Microsoft Cloud, including Office 365 and Azure, to ensure the Institute was setup for success from the beginning of the project and throughout its use of the Microsoft Cloud stack. AvePoint helped the Institute migrate to Office 365 and Azure with the following steps:

1. 1. Discover exactly how much of what content (Exchange, ERP, Folder Shares, and other databases) exist in the Institutes current systems.
2. 2. Assess the data, by type, to identify what it is and ensure the implications of moving that data are documented and which tools within Office 365 and Azure would best fit the business needs associated with each data types.
3. 3. Pilot a migration of 50 end-users, their mailboxes, and associated content into Office 365 to validate assumptions made in previous phases and ensure the Institute’s end users gain the value expected by the migration.

“AvePoint had workshops so the various JGI offices could be interviewed to give their input on technology, what employees felt was not working and what was working,” said Linda.

AvePoint’s conducted study helped the Institute outline a roadmap highlighting three initial areas:

1. 1. Moving the world’s largest primate database to the Cloud: AvePoint estimated it would take a year to sift through the Jane Goodall Institutes’ collection of artifacts, digitize them, and reconfigure the Institute’s Primate Database to move it to the cloud. The database is estimated at 30 TB in size. As a mission-critical tool, it is imperative that nearly 60 years of data collection is preserved and stored in Azure.
2. 2. Upgrading JGI’s accounting system to Dynamics 365 and Nav 2017: In the non-profit world, transparency is key. The Institute needed to make financial information easily accessible.
3. 3. Implementing Outlook, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and Skype for Business to improve collaboration: Through the adoption of Outlook, Skype for Business and Teams, the Institute hopes to gain efficiencies in collaboration across its 40 office locations worldwide, including Africa the core location for the Institute’s continuing research.

AvePoint then led a 50-user migration with the Institute using its Elements Fly tool to migrate email and documents. In two weeks, the 50 users were ramped up in Office 365 and 333 GB of data was migrated into the cloud.

“Moving to Office 365 was a really key inflection point for our organization. This allowed us to have a base platform for all JGI offices around the world to then layer additional capabilities with multiple products,” said Linda.